Overview

Find the most relevant prior research papers on your project topic. Summarize their contributions and describe how you believe your project goes beyond the state of the art. Include a proper list of references. You will submit this assignment on the wiki.

Instructions

Find at least 10 papers on your research topic.

Where to search

Google Scholar is a good resource. Most HCI papers are either published by the ACM in the ACM Digital Library or by IEEE in the Xplore Digital Library. Once you have found a few relevant papers, look through their related work section for additional articles. You may have to be on campus to access PDFs through Berkeley's subscription to these digital libraries.

What to look for

Look for papers that are close in terms of the kind of system and the kind of contribution they describe. Among those, look for high-quality, high-impact papers. There are a variety of proxies you can employ to gauge paper quality quickly, although nothing replaces a careful reading and critical thinking about a paper. Look at the following:

Venue: Where was the paper published? The most selective venues in HCI are the CHI, UIST, CSCW, Ubicomp conferences. The premiere journals are TOCHI and the HCI journal.

Type of publication: Is it a full paper, a note, an extended abstract, a workshop paper, a work in progress, or a demo? Only the first two (papers and notes) are considered archival publications. Other formats may not have been peer reviewed to the same standard.

Citations: How many times has the paper been cited by others? (This metric is not very informative for papers published less than 3 years ago).

Reputation of the researchers: Is the paper from a lab/university with a track record of good research?

What to write

Restate in two sentences what your research question is and how your are investigating that question.

Write up the discussion of related work.

Include a numbered list of references (that you refer to in your writeup above).

It is a good idea to model your related work sections on those of the favorite papers you've read thus far. You may first want to make a list that concisely describes the contribution that each of the papers on your list makes. However, don't just submit that list. Identify clusters of papers that share methodologies or system features, and write your discussion in terms of those higher-level concepts.

Then write how your project will go beyond this state of the art. What is its unique contribution in light of this prior work?

How much to write

3-4 paragraphs.

Citation Managers (Optional)

Citiation managers make your life a lot easier if you frequently write research papers and have to deal with dozens or hundreds of references. If you are a LaTeX user, BibTex is your tool of choice. If you are a Word user, I recommend the free Zotero, which consists of a browser plug-in and a Word plug-in. The browser plugin offers simple import of references from digital library pages

Submission Instructions

You will submit your assignment on this wiki.

Create a Wiki Page for this assignment

Create a wiki page called RelatedWork-FirstName1LastName1FirstName2LastName2 and link to it from each group member's personal account page. Replace FirstNames and LastNames with the names of your group members. Then click on the link and enter the information about your assignment.

Describe your project plan on the wiki

On the page you just created, write up your related work review and your list of references.

Add Link to Your Finished Assignment

One you are finished editing the page, add a link to it at the bottom of the page with your full name as the link text. The wiki syntax will look like this: *[[RelatedWork-FirstName1LastName1FirstName2LastName2|Firstname1 Lastname1 and Firstname2 Lastname2]]. Hit the edit button for the last section to see how we created the link for our group.